


Fastest Skater

by bookwyrmling



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, NHL All-Star Game, nhl!Bitty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 06:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11915139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrmling/pseuds/bookwyrmling
Summary: “I’ve won at least my heat in ever Fastest Skater competition since my rookie year,” he said before turning around to look Bitty in the eye, “Until this year.”“Well, my daddy always told me there’s always someone better out there,” Bitty replied with a smirk and Kent laughed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by checkthanks: Bittyparse in the NHL
> 
> I know nothing about hockey, so...*hand waves in its general direction*
> 
> Check Please and its characters belong to Ngozi Ukazu.

“Congratulations.”

Bitty looked up from the bar and his drink with a measure of surprise. “Kent Parson.”

“So I’m told,” Kent smirked as he stepped up to the bar and signaled to the bartender for two more of what Bitty was having.

“I’ve won at least my heat in every Fastest Skater competition since my rookie year,” he said before turning around to look Bitty in the eye, “Until this year.”

“Well, my daddy always told me there’s always someone better out there,” Bitty replied with a smirk and Kent laughed.

“Still, you beat Gartner’s record and it’s your first time at the All Stars. Gotta feel pretty good.”

“Well, I’m not the first, but I can certainly agree about that,” Bitty laughed as the bartender set two more drinks in front of them and Bitty took up one, “Especially if it means I don’t have to pay for drinks.”

Kent raised his own drink to that and took a sip before saying, “I’ll just have to take it back next year.”

Bitty snorted before looking Kent up and down. “I don’t know,” he said with a grimace, “you are getting up there in years…”

“I’m just barely hitting my prime!” Kent argued against the disrespect before muttering about how he wasn’t even thirty.

Bitty scoffed and took another drink before responding. “You seemed a little winded at the end of our race,” he said while giving Kent the side-eye and a smirk, “You know, the one I just won?”

Setting his drink back down on the bar, but not quite letting it go, Kent leaned in with a wolfish bite and whispered, “You have no idea what it takes to get me winded.”

Bitty turned completely towards him with a raised eyebrow. “What?” he asked, pressing his knee against Kent’s thigh as he too leaned in to offer a challenge, “Are you more of an endurance man?”

“How’d you like to test it out?”

Bitty turned his stool back to his drink and took a prim drink as he admitted, “I could be convinced,” with a flippant shrug of his shoulders. The smirk tugging at one corner of his lips and the way he watched Kent from the corner of half-lidded eyes spoke of sheer calculation.

Kent gave a small nod and chewed at his lip, just watching Bitty as he worked through the rest of his drink. When Bitty set down the empty glass, Kent drained his as well before offering, “You still won’t have to pay for drinks.”

Bitty smiled and it was probably one of the most devastating sights Kent had ever seen, but when Bitty asked, “What’s your room number, sweetheart?” Kent could only smirk.

“My room number?” he asked before walking away, watching Bitty turn around on his bar stool with a confused face. “Nah, grab your skates and meet me in the lobby in twenty. We’re skating suicides until you drop.”

Kent did not think he had ever seen someone’s face change expressions so quickly and he barely held back the giggle that threatened at the sheer and utter shock displayed in Bitty’s dropped jaw and scrunched forehead. “Excuse you?”

“You heard what I said, Bittle,” Kent said as he continued to back his way out of the hotel bar, Bitty hopping off the stool and following him step for step.

“We have a game tomorrow,” Bitty pointed out, stopping still a few feet away from Kent.

“What?” Kent shrugged, his hands in his jean pockets, “Too much for a kid like you to handle?”

Bitty spluttered.

“I get it,” he continued, holding his hands up in defense, “probably past the rookie’s bedtime…”

Bitty ate up those last few feet and shoved a finger into Kent’s chest as he hissed, “I am going to cream you.”

Kent smirked as he leaned in right next to Bitty’s ear and whispered, “Save that for tomorrow night. Winner tops.” While Bitty was still picking his jaw back up off the ground, Kent continued back out into the hotel’s lobby. “Twenty minutes!” he called as a quick reminder.

Bitty stomped back up to the bar and waved the bartender down. “My tab goes on his room,” he demanded, pointing after his retreating competition before rushing out. He had suicides to run.


	2. Chapter 2

“Bittle! Bittle!”

Bitty groaned as he came to, blinking his eyes and squinching his face in confusion at having his name shouted at him while he is being shaken awake.

“Bittle!”

“What?” he groaned, pushing away from the person shaking him and putting a hand down to balance only to touch cold, hard ice.

“Thank fuck,” the other voice said and Bitty suddenly remembered skating suicides until his legs felt like they were going to fall off, chirps and a rush of competition and camaraderie…and a body lunging right at him.

“Shit, I did it again, didn’t I?”

“Again?”

Bitty looked up at a highly concerned Kent Parson who was still hovering, his hands half-way between the small distance between the two of them as if he was waiting for the possibility that Bitty would faint again. “You can put your arms down,” he grumbled before pushing himself onto shaky legs, wincing at the tell-tale ache of a bruise on his thigh.

Kent did not, in fact, drop his arms. Instead, he stood with Bitty, keeping his arms ready just in case. “I’d rather see you off the ice,” he explained, “Are you okay? Any injury? Should I call someone?”

“No!” Bitty loudly shot down as he skated over to the bench and took a seat, fingers slipping to loosen his skates, “Look, I’m fine. Honestly, it was nothing. Guess you just have a bit more endurance than I do.”

“That wasn’t endurance,” Kent continued to press, “You went down the moment I touched you.”

“Parson, I said I’m fine!” Bitty snapped, tearing off his first skate.

Kent stared at him thoughtfully for a moment before ignoring the request, “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Parson…” Bitty warned.

“You can’t take a check.”

The way Bitty’s fingers froze at the laces of his other skate and the seconds of silence answered Kent’s question as well as words ever could.

Bitty licked his lips and tugged off his second skate. “I can when I need to. I just wasn’t expecting it out there tonight.”

“You can’t take a check and you chose to play hockey for a living?”

Bitty huffed. “Look, Parson, I don’t need your chirp-”

“That is hard core,” Kent spoke right over him and Bitty froze for a moment before looking over at him in shock.

“What?”

Kent nodded. “Yeah, yeah, like…even though something is really hard or scary for you, and it’s something you wouldn’t have to ever do normally, you still choose to do it? That’s pretty badass.”

“Well, the paycheck doesn’t hurt,” Bitty grumbled in embarrassed pleasure.

“Okay, but, like, me? I’m a fuckin’ coward,” Kent continued, “I won’t even say hi to someone if I think they’ll ignore me, so…”

Bitty stared at Kent for a while, eyebrows furrowed in disbelief, but Kent wouldn’t look back and Bitty eventually realized it was because it was true. He blinked at that realization, opened his mouth and aborted his speech twice, before his story finally spilled out. “When I was a kid, my dad had me try out for the pee wee football team he coached, but the kids weren’t too happy about Coach’s Kid possibly being favored, so..the bigger ones would kinda try and hit me harder.”

Bitty stared at the floor to avoid Kent’s eyes this time, his hands clenching and unclenching before moving to play with his skates’ laces. “Coach told me to get used to it and toughen up, you know? Shove back? I just hated it more, got scared of it more. Until one day, I got hit and went down, just like that.” Bitty shook his head and sighed before continuing, “My mother told Coach no more football, but the damage was done.”

“I got a therapist in college,” he continued, finally turning to meet Kent’s attentive gaze, trying to prove his reasoning to the other man, “The coaches told me it was either that or I was off the team, and I really did love hockey. A few teammates kinda helped me get used to checks again, too, so, when I’m in a game, and in pads, I can stay on the lookout and ready I guess, but when it’s something like what we were doing out there? when I’m not in my pads? I don’t expect checks, so even coming at me playful kinda….set me off.”

“Shit, man,” Kent shook his head, “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know,” Bitty smiled, certain Kent had no reason to actually be apologizing, before biting his lip and admitting, “I try to keep it quiet, so other teams don’t turn me into any more of a target than I already am.”

Kent grimaced and ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah, man, I get that,” he admitted, “I won’t tell. That kinda game isn’t fun, anyway. And I know what it’s like being the targeted little guy, so…”

When Kent smiled this time, a little awkward and very honest, Bitty smiled confidently back. “Thanks.”

It was after he realized he had been staring and smiling silently for an abnormal amount of time that Kent shook himself out of his weird little comfortable stupor Bitty had put him in, took a deep breath and said, “So I’m thinking I grab us an Uber and we find some ice cream, my treat.”

“Ice cream?” Bitty asked, “This late?”

Kent nodded. “Ice cream.” Finally ready to head out, he picked up his skates and Bitty’s and began to lead them back towards the entrance.

“And then tomorrow you can treat me to dinner after the game.”

Bitty paused behind Kent, one hand on his hip and asked, “And why am I treating you?”

Kent shrugged and grinned back at Bitty. “It only seems fair since tonight’s on me.” He rolled his shoulder to prod them the rest of the way to the rink’s entrance, “Besides, we both know that short of supernatural intervention, East is gonna beat West this year and I’m gonna need cheering up.”

Bitty snorted before breaking out in full laughter. “Fine,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender, “but I’m gonna have expectations.”

“And, like I said,” Kent replied with a roll of his eyes and an almost skeevy grin as he held the door open for Bitty, “I’ll need cheering up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on Tumblr at rushingsnowy!


End file.
